


contraband

by sirfeit



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Contraband, Flashback fic, Gen, Prison
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:59:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8194738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: a set of loosely-connected vignettes about Murphy and Mbege's friendship in the Skybox, each centering around an article of contraband





	1. books

**Author's Note:**

> originally titled 'but you were always gold to me'.

He didn’t have a cellmate for a long time after he punched out Ben, because honestly, after that, the guards had learned. So he slept alone and snarled enough at anyone who got in his way that they backed off, because he was dangerous. He was a killer. He was a killer, except his victim lived, still lives, with his skin grafted and his limbs working. But he did some fucking good before he was locked up for no reason, because nobody would ever have taken him in after his mom died. On the one hand: good riddance. On the other hand, here’s this useless kid. 

But now he’s in Prison Station, and he can become useful. Useful until they kill him at eighteen, because he set one of the officers on fire, and he’s never getting out. 

And it doesn’t even matter. He was born to die. He will never see the ground: he is just a stepping stone on the way to get there. 

Due to what he assumes to be an error, he gets taken out for more recess time during second shift, and when he is returned to his cell, there’s another person there. As the door shuts behind him, he is aware of his whole self, and how he is lacking for it: he wishes he had spent his recess working out or something, instead of fucking around with McIntyre and Dax. The other person stands up, and there’s a moment when they’re just staring at each other, and before the other person can say anything, Murphy snarls “I get top bunk.”

He shrugs, the movement easy across his shoulders, and says: “Sure. I’m John.”

“That’s not going to fucking work,” says Murphy, still rough. “ _I’m_ John.”

“Okay,” says the stranger, still easy. “I’m Mbege. John Mbege.”

“Good,” he replies, a little relaxed. “I’m Murphy.” And then he goes up to his top bunk and doesn’t say anything, and neither does Mbege.

—

Before Mbege, he bounced around between shifts and work details, because he really isn’t a very tolerable person to authority figures, but it’s okay because he kind of gets time to spend with everyone. Once, they had kept his cell entirely dark for a week, apparently to get him used to working third shift exclusively, except he worked all the shifts and the next week the lights were back on again, so it was probably for some imagined slight. Well, he had been terrible that week, but he was always terrible, so he was really just keeping the status quo on that one. 

Anyhow, after Mbege, they’re both assigned to the sanitation department, which is. Not the worst job that Murphy has worked. It’s just monotonous, and kind of gross, but he’s used to gross stuff, so. There’s that. And: here is the absolutely greatest thing about rooming with someone; he gets _assigned_ somewhere, instead of just fucking around forever. Mbege follows him around like a puppy, which is whatever. He’s not going to be doing him any favors. He’s not stupid. 

Mbege doesn’t talk very much. When he does talk, it’s this mishmash of sentence fragments and half-formed words, and it takes Murphy a couple seconds to really process anything. He learns to read Mbege’s silences easily: mostly things like _check out this asshole_ and _you should probably shut up now._ But Murphy’s never been great at keeping his mouth shut, and Mbege doesn’t help at all. 

Sometimes, they’ll be alone in their cell, and Murphy will just be talking, like he does, and Mbege will laugh at something he says, and — Murphy really likes that. He likes making Mbege laugh, kind of in the same way that he likes making Harper tell him to fuck off. It’s a good sound. It makes him feel good.

It doesn’t mean they’re friends or anything, though.

—

Mbege clears one month without an infraction his first month there, which is _fucking unbelievable,_ Murphy doesn’t think he’s _ever_ done that, and with that he earns the privilege of seeing visitors. 

It’s his parents. Of course he goes to visit his fucking parents. While he’s out, Murphy gets another hour in the yard, where he stares at the huge fake sun and gets his daily amount of Vitamin Dick. The Ark is on the other side of the sun this year, which means that they don’t get enough light because the sun rotates. Or something. Look, he didn’t finish school. 

And then he goes back to the cell and he waits for Mbege and he seethes and Mbege comes back as happy as anything and he wants to punch something. He wants to _hurt_ something. He is locked in this cell. Guards won’t come back for ages. He will settle for Mbege.

Mbege is carrying a book, tucked underneath his arm. “That’s contraband,” Murphy accuses, as Mbege folds himself onto the bottom bunk, long arms and longer legs.

“Yeah,” agrees Mbege, and looks up at him. “You gonna rat me out?”

He would never. “Not if you read aloud to me,” he says, a bargain.

He expects Mbege to bend under the pressure of it: to collapse under the weight of using his voice to placate Murphy’s wrath, but Mbege sets the book onto his crossed legs and thumbs it open. His voice is steady:

“Now hollow fires burn out to black,  
And lights are fluttering low:  
Square your shoulders, lift your pack  
And leave your friends and go.  
O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,  
Look not left nor right:  
In all the endless road you tread  
There’s nothing but the night.” 

“That’s dumb,” says Murphy, but he feels kind of heady with the weight of the words — _there’s nothing but the night._ “Read another one.”

Mbege gives him half of a smile.

—

“They won’t let you keep it, you know,” says Murphy. “The book. They search our cells. They’ll take it away.”

Mbege gives half a shrug. He doesn’t really seem to care.

\--

“Prisoners #208 and #165,” they hear over the intercom system, at the usual time. “An inspection of your cell is forthcoming. Assume the lockdown position.”

Mbege is folded into the bottom bunk, reading. He stands up, stretches, and then looks down at his stupid book. An expression of fear crosses his face, and then it resumes its usual blankness. He looks to Murphy, then tucks the book underneath his pillow, like that’ll help.

 _Christ._ There isn’t much time. He steps over to Mbege’s bunk, retrieves the book, and then tucks it underneath his own mattress. 

Murphy drops to his knees. Mbege stares at him. Murphy takes hold of his arm and yanks him down. “Just follow me,” he growls, irritated, and interlocks his fingers behind his head. Mbege follows his lead, thank _God._

The guards come in, trash Mbege’s stuff, don’t find anything. Then they come to Murphy’s bunk, and — Look, he always stores his shit in the same place. It’s not a smart move, but neither is _having_ illegal stuff in the first place, and while we’re here, it’s not a smart move to set people on fire either, so nobody really should blame him for the repetition of his mistakes. It doesn’t really matter where he puts it anyway: they always find it, and it’s always awful.

One of the guards, the redhead, finds the book. “Hey,” she says, turning it over. “What are you doing with this, Murphy? You can’t even read.”

“Gonna burn it,” he says, looking straight ahead. “’S gonna be fun.”

A hand in his hair, yanking him up. He keeps his hands where they are, his eyes straight ahead.

“You know what the punishment for having books is,” says the redhead. “Why didn’t you burn it before now?”

He does look at her, then. “You know,” he says, lazy. “I’m very busy. Got a lot on my plate. Didn’t have time this week.” 

She gives him the ghost of a bitter smile, and then she’s cuffing his hands behind his back. He shifts his eyes to Mbege, still on his knees. _Good._

He gets out of solitary three days later to find a mostly-spent lighter on his pillow. He spends the rest of the week thumbing down the switch, smelling the gas, watching the flame for several seconds. He always takes his thumb off before he lets the flame spread, yet. It’s tempting.

But he has Mbege to think of now.


	2. flashlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sappy and mbege is great thanks for reading

People generally imagine the blind as enclosed in a black world. There is, for example, Shakespeare's line: _looking on darkness which the blind do see_. If we understand darkness as blindness than Shakespeare is wrong. One of the colors of the blind – or at least this blind man –– do not see is black; another is red.  _Le rouge et le noir_ are the colors denied us. I, who was accustomed to sleeping in total darkness, was bothered for a long time at having to sleep in this world of mist, in the greenish or bluish mist, vaguely luminous, which is the world of the blind. I wanted to lie down in darkness.

The world of the blind is not the night that people imagine. 

[Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights]

 

—

 

Sometimes John dreams about space.  His parents are both engineers; they wanted him to go into that, but he has seen space; he has smelled it. He has seen the void and he has walked back from it, shaking. _It’s just carbon,_ his parents said, laughing at him, but he knows they are lying: it is a thousand burning, dying stars and it is the void and it is all the air being sucked out of your body. It is suffocation. It is _beyond_. It is the _whole universe._

Letting go has never been in John’s plans.

He got assigned to the medical ward instead. Which is fine, whatever. He will fix people, and that is similar to not letting go. Mostly it is diseases; epidemics that wipe out whole wings, stuff you just have to wait out because there’s no medicine left. He finds himself swiping stuff from the ward, small stuff like painkillers, for his mom, for his dad, for leaving underneath his bed to squirrel away later. He gets assigned to folding blankets one week, and look, it’s _fucking cold_ in the space station, and he just wanted —

It was a nonviolent crime. He hit a guard by accident. He is dirt. He is not the daughter of the head doctor, like Clarke is, even though he can see the _pity_ and the _compassion_ in her eyes when she watches him get arrested. _Fuck her._ He will not make it out of Prison Station alive. Here is his future, sealed in a single moment: three years in jail and then the blackness of space. He does not speak to defend himself; he hates the sound of his voice more than most people. 

His parents still love him. His parents talk about a future where he is released after his review. It’s a nice thing to talk about. 

 

—

 

Murphy comes back from solitary to find the lighter on his pillow. He doesn’t look, but he can hear the flick open, the smell of the gas. _It’s just carbon._

It’s just a thousand, burning, dying stars. It’s just the whole entire universe. It’s no big deal.

 

—

 

He follows Murphy back to their cell after their shift. Inside, it’s dark: there’s no light. As the guard shuts the door all last remaining vestiges of light are snuffed out.

John had read once, about there being a sixth sense to the human body: sight sound taste touch smell, and then the sixth; nothing special or fancy, just the sense of knowing where your body parts were even if you couldn’t see them. Proprioception. And then, even, a seventh sense: equilibrioception, the sense of balance. 

John feels like all of those senses have been taken away. 

This is the Void that he dreams about. This is the end of all things, the end of him: he is being sucked into space and there is no air and he is choking —

“Jesus Christ,” says Murphy into the darkness. He flicks on the lighter. The flame stutters into life: it illuminates his face in spurts, flashes. “One time they did this for a whole fucking week. It was hell. Come on, I’ve got a flashlight.” The light goes out, and John stands there, frozen. There’s a bang — Murphy’s taking something apart, maybe the bedframe — and then another bang, as the bedframe slots back together, and Murphy switches the flashlight on.

They’re just in their cell. They’re not in the void of space. They’re locked in. Nothing’s gonna fucking get to them. It’s just him, and Murphy, and their bunk, and their toilet + sink thing. 

He takes a deep breath. He lets it out.

“You getting fucked up by the dark?” Murphy asks. He’s on the top bunk now, legs curled up.

“’S fine,” he says. It’s fine.

Murphy shines the flashlight into John’s face. It’s bright. He blinks back tears. “You want me to come snuggle with you or something?”

Murphy means it as a jest. He means it as a joke, a way to get underneath John’s skin. He means it to hurt.

“Yeah,” John says. “Come down here and snuggle with me.” He matches Murphy’s tone, his words, so he gets them out right on the first try. 

The flashlight goes off. John braces himself for Murphy’s sudden and unpredictable violence. Murphy always feints for the face first, and then goes for the stomach, the soft parts. Ends up with his knuckles bloody, his face flushed. 

Flashlight comes back on. There’s a tug at John’s wrist.

“Then come on,” Murphy says into the dark. “Take your shoes off. It’ll be a while until they come and get us for second meal.”

Right. It’s not nighttime. This is supposed to be their free time before that.

John pulls his shoes off, sets them by the bed. Murphy shoves him onto the bottom bunk, then crawls in beside him. He doesn’t seem like he will become violent, but John is careful. He is always careful around Murphy. They are touching, but just barely: Murphy’s shoulder to his shoulder, Murphy’s hip to his. 

“You got anything else left to read?” Murphy says.

“It’s dark,” John says stupidly.

Murphy makes a grumbling noise and then passes over the flashlight. John feels the weight of it in his hand, the batteries inside the metal casing to lightbulb to wire. 

To read something to Murphy, he would have to sit up, and — the warmth of Murphy’s weight, against his side, anchoring him — 

 

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And look down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that the mornign equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

 

“You memorized that one,” says Murphy, sulking. “Not fair.”

“Shut up,” says John, kind of smiling. “You liked it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow sorry for the entirety of the robert frost poem here i just couldn’t really find any place to cut it and i wanted murphy to hear the whole thing
> 
> haha it’s 1am i’m going to bed thanks for reading and please enjoy more updates on everything as i engage in nanowrimo
> 
> [as always. your kudos and comments mean the literal world to me. i’m sorry i never seem to get around to replying to them, or replyign weirdly late!!]

**Author's Note:**

> mbege’s poem is by a.e housman  
> it’s vitamin d, murphy. vitamin d.
> 
> murphy: the real reason that the ark has no oxygen (because the lighter is eating it)
> 
> im 2tired to write proper ending notes, sorry. i love u all <3 <3 <3


End file.
